Yeah, the forum search hasn't worked for me in a long time. I use the work around verysunshine does of using Google with filters, but it still isn't very efficient. It's a shame, because a lot of good Ren'Py knowledge is here on the forums, but isn't easily found anymore. Several times over the past few days I've just had to manually go through all the pages in the forum and hope people have created good topic titles .... not a very efficient way to look for help.

Can people post searches that are broken? Its been working for me, which is why this is weird.

My last search was "adding background music" - received a blank page.
I'm wondering if searching anything with multiple spaces in it might be causing the error. For example, searching "button" leads to a list of results, but searching something like "button system time" leads to a blank page? Maybe, maybe not? I'll do more searches.EDIT: Scratch that theory. Searching for "Magicians of Delphine" gets results, searching "script sprite file" gets another blank page. Not sure what is happening.

Perhaps there were too many hits or the server just decided I was searching for something that was too crass. The error message was different than before: This page isn’t working
lemmasoft.renai.us is currently unable to handle this request.
HTTP ERROR 500.

This was on Chrome 63.0.3239.132 (Official Build) (64-bit)

The thing that usually triggers an error is probably "your posts" or something similar, I think they tend to trigger "504 gateway time-out error" more often. I've been away for the last two to three weeks however, so I haven't been particularly active recently.

Went scampering to find which database the forum sat on and found... Tom's shadow (and a deer apparently)...
I had to share

On topic: It might actually make sense to archive posts older than say 2 years into a mirror database (or legacy sub-domain) that general searches do not target... With legacy gui and the advent of Ren'py 7.0 just here, thousands of old posts and threads just are not relevant any more.

On topic: It might actually make sense to archive posts older than say 2 years into a mirror database (or legacy sub-domain) that general searches do not target... With legacy gui and the advent of Ren'py 7.0 just here, thousands of old posts and threads just are not relevant any more.

This is actually a great idea. The Ren'py Questions posts should definitely be archived beyond a certain date and made inaccessible to general searches. It is kind of terrible when you search a coding question on Ren'py you get results from 6-7 years ago that are no longer relevant or just plain old BAD PRACTICE now.

Just a few weeks ago I was searching for a solution to problem (using Google - because see the topic we are in) and got a top search result to a Lemmasoft thread where PyTom gave some code to do what I wanted. Great! Except it didn't work ... and when I looked at the date and saw how old the post was, I knew why. Cut to 20 minutes later and I eventually found the answer by searching the Ren'Py documentation, which had a code sample VERY similar, but with the all important updated changes that made it work in the current version of Ren'Py.

I know PyTom has been making a big effort to teach best practices lately with his Ren'Py articles and posts - because a lot of bad behavior from the engine is developer-error for using out-dated or bad practices - but how much are nearly a decade's worth of old Ren'Py coding posts contributing to the problem? Might be time to wall them off in their own secret garden for historical posterity.

Just checking in to day that I'm having search issues July 2018. I'll do an advanced search and the result will just be a black want screen with nothing on it. No errors...just a blank screen.

A Close Shave:
*Last Thing Done (Aug 17): Finished coding emotions and camera for 4/10 main labels.
*Currently Doing: Coding of emotions and camera for the labels--On 5/10
*First Next thing to do: Code in all CG and special animation stuff
*Next Next thing to do: Set up film animation
*Other Thing to Do: Do SFX and Score (maybe think about eye blinks?)